Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to video conferencing and more specifically to managing a multi-window display based on a policy.
Video conferencing is a convenient and efficient way to hold meetings. Typically, participants in a meeting are displayed on a screen for another participant to view. When large meetings are taking place, it may not be desirable to show all the participants in the meeting on the screen at the same time. For example, a small minority of participants in the meeting may be doing most of the talking. Displaying all of the participants may be unnecessary and confusing to a participant since the display can be cluttered and participants' images may be too small. Additionally, the computational requirements of displaying all of the participants may be prohibitive. Thus, video conference systems may display only a small subset of participants in an arrangement of windows. For example, a certain number of the most recent speakers may be shown on the screen.
An end device may display multiple windows and assign a specific function or “policy” to each window. For example, one window can be associated with the most recent speaker, a second window associated with the second most recent speaker, etc. The displayed arrangement of participants may change dynamically depending on events that occur during the conference. For example, when a new speaker talks, the new speaker is now the most recent speaker. This causes all the speakers being displayed in the windows to change as the previous most recent speaker becomes the second most recent speaker, etc. This shuffling of windows causes confusion and is distracting to a participant.